An O.A.P.'s view of everything.

Monthly Archives: December 2011

Another day of murk again with the hills befogged in thick, drizzly cloud. South East water though, apparently entrenched in drought, have asked ‘customers’ not to take baths to save water.
So I will join in with them in sympathy…
I watched Military Wives programme on TV last night. A good insight into getting a choir of ordinary folk singing. Highspot for moi was when they did that Bob Dylan song – just awesome. It’s on youtube somewhere if you fancy a listen.
Meanwhile, archaeologists and scientists are studying an obsidian bracelet, that’s volcanic glass in English, made some nine or ten thousand years ago. Apparently its finishing and polishing is all but impossible to re-create today! Yet the maker would have lived and worked in what we call the Neolithic (New Stone Age) Period.
In Hungary they’ve erected a statue of Steve Jobs…
Mmmm…I wonder if they’ll be able to re-create that in ten thousand years?
At the beeb global-warming, eu warming, and anti-everything website they ask: “What’s it like being jobless at Christmas?”
In a nutshell? Bloody marvelous!

It’s bright and mild this morning and, after the solstice, slowly getting lighter again.
But the glut of different coloured dustbins that now stand where once trees pumped oxygen into me garden is a constant worry.
No one knows what time men will call to empty them. So at a fine-avoiding 6.30 a.m., when it’s pitch-black outside, you’re up tryinta decide which bin is foggy grey or mushy-pea-green, in case you shove the wrong one to the pavement for the emptiers. (Huge fine?)
What you have to remember is: Is it the grey week, or the green week, or the blue week or the brown week? Or, is it one of the weeks when two or more are permeated from the four for collection on the same day?
Or is it, you ask yourself, the week, that surely must occur, when no bins are collected at all!
🙂

A murky morning again with really low cloud over the hills – mind you yesterday Boris the Mayor was seen down Diagon Alley. Maybe he was after a wand…
In such austere times, like old Vince, I wouldn’t give-up me heating allowance either! For him it’s just more of the same, for me it’s getting me own back!
In things national health a new term has been coined – The Super Quango. It’s not officially kicked-off and losing money like water down a plughole yet, but already about 5,000 otherwise doled ex-other-quango mouths-to-feed have already signed-up. The brief? To protect our health.
Whether we want it protecting or not.

Some interesting snippets around in the news as, locally, the weather is murky and unclear.
An mp no less whinges about his student loans, money borrowed, and borrowed by thousands as they educate themselves.
Meanwhile The Turin Shroud and Stonehenge, despite much scrutiny and research, still defy academe as to what they are and how they were made.
🙂

A bit of mushy snow falls here today as, rumour pervades, the beeb are to build a real Tardis for Dr. Who, rather than just film time-travel in the studio!
Exeter council say managers can now track their bin-collections, from council HQ, on satellite CCTV.
Mind you, if you didn’t pay for one, you’d not have to pay for the other.
Doh!
The TV gaffe’s continue as viewers are stunned to see that The Wombles of Wimbledon are really people in funny suits.
Shock horror!!
In Coventry they’ve been deluged with shedloads of apples falling for about an hour from the sky.
A core of a plot surely for Dr. Who to get his teeth into – but where is he when you need him?
(Filming at The Nebula II Galaxy five hundred light years north of Wapping!)
HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

A murky old morning as The Coalition target ‘problem families’ in a big way that they say cost us £9 billion a year. (Mail)
With the new proposals that figure should rise by oh, at least double!
But, interestingly, ‘The Coalition says Labour’s welfare legacy means there are many parts of Britain where three generations of families have never worked and live a life funded by state benefits’.
Do they mean The Houses of Parliament? Of course not, silly me.
The good news is that Self – Employment numbers are now up to 4.1 million after 166,000 chose the brave path between August and October. A spokeswoman for Capital Economics said, ‘…the jump is likely to reflect people resorting to self-employment.’
As if it’s a crime? But obviously no one at Capital Economics is tarred with the ‘self-employed’ brush, so are they funded? Don’t they have a boss?
A spokesman for The Chartered Institute for Personnel and Development said, ‘..it’s a sign of economic weakness not strength..’
Again, no self-employment there then! Bill Gates, Richard Branson, Mick Jagger, Kelly Brook, Cliff Richard, Clint Eastwood…just a few ‘economically weak’ folk then eh?
Bear in mind that to self-employed folk the biggest ‘problem families’ are those govern-mentally funded!
Mmmm…Moss Bros, upmarket clothiers, report good High-Street and Online sales, (Mary) well, all those newly self-employed folk have to look good don’t they?
And doubtless therein is a good, initial ‘quality’ thought for those so braving.

A nice clear morning today but The Mail, still befogged it seems, asks, in the wake of the Mary Portas High Street Saga (now old hat surely!), “Why don’t you visit your High-Street anymore?”
Because, chuck, all the friggin’ shops have shut!
DOH!
“Don’t just book it – Thomas Cook it!!!”
Mary!
A 115m year-old pensioner has dug up a dinosaur bone while gardening.
It’s rumoured that he’d got two bowls of broth out of it before taking it to a local museum.
Dendrochronological tests, by archeologists at the museum, show that the pensioner isn’t actually 115 million years old!
Yet.
The powers that be at the EU are after Great Britain stumping-up £30billion as a bail-out/wages fund.
As a result a pensioner’s booklet: “How I got two bowls of broth from a single dinosaur bone.” is, apparently, outselling Harry Potter!
National Museum security staff have been asked to keep an eye on any elderly visitors with large shopping-bags, when they’re not sat reading the pensioner’s booklet!
Eastern Siberian scientists are alarmed by huge ‘fountains’ of neat methane rising from Arctic sea-water in the region. The effects on global-warming, they say, could be terrifying.
Reports of sonar recordings, sounding like umpteen whales laughing, are unfounded.
Meanwhile at the beeb the wind industry (oh yes!) has called for a trebling of turbine numbers in the south east.
The wind industry?
Yep, the wind industry.
Morrisons are to create 7,000 new jobs next year. The firm won the contract for Dino-Broth and goat-skinfulls of the stuff now flood their shelves!
The wind industry expects a massive productivity increase – all down to one old fart.

Apart from being freezing it’s like a spring morning here, as I read, that Border Agency toughies are getting to grips with all the fake, dangerous and counterfeit tat that floods into the country at Christmas.
I’m not sure if they’ve watched Frozen Planet yet…
After months of detective-work, in the Mail, that nice Mary Portas recommends tax-reduction, parking re-thinks and planning relaxation in order to ‘save the High Street’.
Which is exactly what shop-keepers have been saying for years – only they don’t get paid for it!
At the beeb she says High Streets should be run more like businesses.
What? Close ’em all down?
Rumour pervades that there’s some kind of large predator in the Olympic River that’s eating large geese and possibly swans.
Ticket sales have risen – slightly…
A blurred photograph would help.
Eastern European locals are relishing the thought of ‘Two Birds Inside Pike’ for Christmas while five thousand Olympic Officials predict world speed records for the Two Man Rowing boats!
Not running a car at the moment I decided to check-out a few potential models as I walked to the cash-machine this morning.
Mmm, in this recessionary age I’ll have to bow to financial pressures –
and get a new BMW like everybody else!
Bosses at the beeb are over the moon after finding Dr. Who episodes from the 1960’s. Apparently, they say, the episodes have been lost in a time-warp but had the licence-fee been greater, they’d have got to them earlier!
Four million jubilant Programme – Planners and Co-Ordinators say it’s great to have something so far unseen to broadcast!
The episodes are, the beeb says, in an unusual format – Monochrome, which the beeb hopes will become the new trend!
One of the episodes found is Part Two of The Underwater Menace. The beeb is hopeful that a new Part One can be filmed, on the cheap, at the Olympic River…

A murky Monday morning but who cares? Fun can be gleaned looking how public and private sector editors order hacks to report news.
For instance The Mail tells us Amazon is having great days trading via the Internet.
Meanwhile, as Mary Quantas tells us to get market-stalls, BBC camera-men go to South American Jungles!
DOH!
Mind you, the Amazon online saga – 3 million items sold on ‘Cyber Monday’ – might not be all good news – Mrs Condor has, this Christmas, located the URL…..
Many MP’s have said that children in primary school should be given lessons in ‘financial’ matters.
Who will teach what? Especially on the concept of Profit.
A BBC world survey reckons that job-loss/unemployment is the biggest worry.
No, the biggest worry is having to be self-employed, if it wasn’t there’d be no unemployment and, probably, no BBC!